TITLE: ‘The fabric of nature Is unraveling,’ warns new report on wildlife population decline
https://www.commondreams.org/news/living-planet-index-report-73-percent-decline
EXCERPT: Monitored populations of the world's vertebrate animals declined on average by 73% between 1970 and 2020, according to a major report released Wednesday by the World Wild Fund for Nature and the Zoological Society of London.
The 94-page report, 2024 Living Planet Report: A System in Peril, details the extent of loss for over 5,000 species of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, and reptiles. The findings are based on studies of about 35,000 local populations of the studied species.
It's the latest version of a comprehensive report that has in the past been heavily cited by media, nonprofit, and government figures around the world. The previous version, published in 2022, found a 69% decline using data through 2018.
WWF released the new report, which is based on data in the Living Planet Index (LPI) maintained by ZSL, in advance of the COP16 global biodiversity summit that starts in Cali, Colombia on October 21.
"It really does indicate to us that the fabric of nature is unraveling,” Rebecca Shaw, WWF's chief scientist, told The Washington Post.
The LPI, though seen by many as a key metric for following biodiversity loss, has been misinterpreted in the past and is not without its critics.
The findings don't mean that the total number of vertebrates or vertebrate species declined by 73%—rather, the figure shows an average change in population size. That is, in the index, a change in the population size of a very small population of, say, Guam kingfishers would have the same weight as a change in the population size of a far more populous animal.
A study published in June in Nature Communications questioned the mathematical techniques used by the LPI's authors and found that they had likely overstated vertebrate population decline. The LPI authors are preparing a rebuttal.
Some scientists, including Louise McRae, a ZSL researcher who works on the index, have suggested that it may in fact underestimate biodiversity loss because amphibian and reptile populations, which are struggling the most, are not fully represented in the database, as they're hard to monitor.
In any case, even the index's critics agree with the underlying argument that there is a crisis of biodiversity loss underway.
TITLE: Investments in Nature Will Decide Our Future
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/cop16-nature-positive-investment-key-to-development-and-climate-change-by-ambroise-fayolle-2024-10
EXCERPT: Ahead of the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity in Cali, Colombia, this month, we must remember that the crises affecting nature also pose structural risks to the global economy, our collective well-being and prosperity, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Fully 55% of global GDP is highly or moderately dependent on nature.
In Cali, delegates from nearly 200 countries will discuss how to accelerate action to protect 30% of the planet’s land and maritime areas, reduce pollution, and restore degraded ecosystems by 2030. One of the key obstacles to meeting these ambitious targets is financing. Not only do we currently invest far too much in activities that harm nature and make our problems worse; we invest only one-third of what is needed to meet the 2030 targets for climate, biodiversity, and land degradation.
To scale up nature-positive investment, we need to do four things. First, we must build more effective public-private partnerships between countries and public development banks, as well as with nature organizations, companies, and private-sector financial institutions. This would help de-risk investments, prepare projects, and deliver impact at scale for climate, nature, and inclusive economic development. Second, we need to revive and mainstream regenerative practices and stewardship of biodiversity, particularly in the agriculture, forestry, and fishing sectors.
Third, we need common principles, standards, and disclosure mechanisms to track nature-positive finance and its impact, and to disclose more information on the nature-related footprints, dependencies, and risk exposure of companies and financial institutions. Finally, to take nature into consideration in all policies and investment decisions, we must decrease the flow of financing to activities that are harmful to nature.
Multilateral development banks will play a key role in scaling up green investments. Institutions like the European Investment Bank are already stepping up support for the protection, restoration, and sustainable use of nature with the launch of common principles for tracking nature-positive finance. Such information is essential for measuring and incorporating nature into multilateral lenders’ operations, as well as informing other investors about what constitutes a nature-positive investment. Partnerships and joint efforts to put these principles into practice are ongoing.
TITLE: Global banks want to monetise biodiversity
https://www.theedgesingapore.com/news/sustainability/global-banks-want-monetise-biodiversity
EXCERPTS: Some of the world’s biggest banks are about to gather for talks, with the goal of monetising a theme that until now has left much of Wall Street drawing blanks: nature and biodiversity.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Standard Chartered are among lenders sending representatives for the first time to the United Nations’ COP16 biodiversity summit, which starts next week in the Colombian city of Cali. Other banks that plan to send staff include Citigroup, Bank of America, HSBC Holdings and Deutsche Bank.
The sudden interest in a theme that’s long been deemed too obscure and niche for Wall Street comes as banks and asset managers increasingly look to biodiversity as a new incubator for financial engineering. Meanwhile, the UN has warned that without private finance taking an interest, there won’t be nearly enough money to fight the ongoing mass extinction of species and degradation of the natural world.
“The end goal is really to have more finance and investment going into the space,” Gwen Yu, head of nature and biodiversity at JPMorgan, said in an interview. By attending COP16, JPMorgan will be able to make progress in figuring out how biodiversity “fits into our book”, she said.
The small handful of biodiversity products doing the rounds to date includes so-called debt-for-nature swaps, which allow governments to refinance debt and then put savings toward nature conservation.
Once the domain of public finance only, debt-for-nature swaps were reinvented three years ago by Credit Suisse to include private investors. The total volume to date of such deals is just US$1.6 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. But there are signs of growth. Goldman Sachs Group and UBS Group, which acquired Credit Suisse last year, are among banks actively working on debt-for-nature swaps, and Bank of America completed its first deal last year.
StanChart has created a nature-innovation hub dedicated to new products. “There’s a moment here for us to really seize,” Marisa Drew, who took over as chief sustainability officer at StanChart in 2022 after almost two decades at Credit Suisse, said in an interview. The goal is to “both influence policymaking, but then take that and run with it in terms of mobilizing capital”.
New products being explored by bankers include biodiversity credits. These would function in a similar way to carbon credits, so that buyers could address their biodiversity footprint by investing in conservation projects. Hedge fund veteran Kyle Bass is among investors that have established a foothold in a regulated version of this market in the US.
Opportunities to invest in funds that target biodiversity are currently limited, with Morningstar Direct putting the universe at just under US$4 billion. That follows 45% growth in assets under management over the past year. So far in 2024, biodiversity-labeled funds have delivered average returns of about 11%, compared with the 13% decline in the S&P Global Clean Energy Index.
JPMorgan, Lloyds Banking Group and NatWest Group are among banks that have created senior roles dedicated to tracking regulatory and product developments within biodiversity.
“The big success here is acknowledgment that the private sector stands to engage on the topic in a very considered way,” StanChart’s Withers said. “That’s the big win.”
TITLE: We need $700 billion to save nature
https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/378249/cop16-biodiversity-finance-gap-seven-hundred-billion
EXCERPT: If there’s one number worth paying attention to in the fight to protect nature, it’s this: $700 billion.
That’s the sum in US dollars that experts say we need each year — in addition to more than $100 billion the world is already spending — to stop the decline of animals and ecosystems and all the services they provide, from creating clean water to pollinating commercial crops. That money would go toward ramping up urgently needed conservation efforts including replanting forests and making farms more wildlife-friendly.
But how exactly countries can raise that money is still an open question, and one that’s central to the modern environmental movement. Beginning Monday, world leaders will meet in Cali, Colombia, for a major United Nations event known as COP16, the world’s most important conference concerned with protecting plant and animal life. Finalizing a plan to funnel more money into the environment is one of the event’s main goals and one of its most enduring sticking points.
The good news is that $700 billion is actually not that much. At least compared to global GDP, which amounts to more than $100 trillion. And it’s less than the US alone spends on its military each year.